Wednesday, November 28, 2007

This flower is made by paste embossing with a brass template. I'll be doing a tutorial on it soon, as I've never seen one on paste embossing before. See how the flower has a shimmer to it? That's because I mixed Pearl Ex in with the clear paste. By doing this, I didn't have to color the flower first with pastels, markers, inks, or colored pencils.

Friday, November 23, 2007

Black Friday is my favorite day of the year! I love getting up early and going shopping with my mom to get all the best deals! I just got back and my Christmas shopping is done!! Tomorrow is my birthday...I'll be 33.

Last year, my birthday landed on Black Friday, but I was unable to go shopping. I had just gotten out of the hospital after having major abdominal surgery for Crohn's Disease. It was a horrible surgery - I lost 18 pounds in one week and it took me 5 months to recover. For those of you that don't know what Crohn's is, it is an Infammatory Bowel Disease associated with fevers, severe abdominal pain, and chronic diarrhea. Although my disease is finally in remission, I have a 98% chance that it will return...usually within 2 years of having surgery. The worst part is that my darling 2 year old daughter has a 25% chance of developing Crohn's herself.

So while I'm healthy, I am doing everything I can to raise funds for cure. This spring I will be participating in a walk sponsored by the Crohn's and Colitis Foundation of America (CCFA - http://www.ccfa.org/), and my goal is to raise $1,000 in pledges. However, this pledge sign-up has an incentive...for every dollar that you pledge, you will get put into a blog candy drawing for OVER $100 worth of Altering, Cardmaking, and Scrapbooking items!!!

That means if you pledge $1, you get one entry in the drawing; a $20 pledge means your name goes into the hat 20 times (etc. etc.)!! Here's a photo of the prize:

This weekend was the Madison Stamp Expo. I went there and got to meet the infamous Gina K of Gina K Stamps!! Her booth was so crowded that you couldn't get in to buy anything. That's ok, because her store in Madison opens in a few weeks and I'll be one of her first customers!! I was also excited to meet Amy, aka scrapperonwheels from Splitcoaststampers. Her and her mom were very nice and we have plans to meet at Gina's when the store opens!! It is fun to finally get to meet in person the people you know online!! By the way, is anyone going on the Stamp-n-cruise next October??

Sunday, November 18, 2007

With Thanksgiving around the corner, I just had to do a "thankful" layout. (Of course we all know that I'm thankful for Payton!!) I used the Cricut "Opposites Attract" for the title and the sketch from "gettinsketchy."

During Payton's first year of life, I took her photo in the same place on the 24th of each month. This layout shows how much she grew that first year!!! I know it's not a fancy layout, but I wanted the photos to tell the story and I couldn't crop the photos either!!

Sunday, November 11, 2007

I got this cool idea for a split stamp card on the poohisstamping site. She always has super cool techniques that I can't find anywhere else. I used the card sketch from learntostampandscrap and I have a great card!

Tuesday, November 6, 2007

I donated my hair to Locks of Love for the second time today. My hair is so thick that I was able to donate 4 ponytails today....it takes 6 ponytails to make a wig. Here are some photos which I'm sure will end up in a scrapbook layout!!

Here are the rest of the cards for Angels awesome sketch challenges. I tried to make a lot of birthday cards so I can give them to my 93 year old grandma for Christmas. She still remembers everyone's birthdays but just can't get out to buy Birthday cards anymore. I tried to make a lot of masculine cards since there are so many guys in our family!!! Here they are:

(I tried to get them in order, but for some reason blogger won't let me!!)

About Me

Hello! I'm Cheryl. I'm an engineer turned stay-at-home mom to my beautiful 6 year old daughter, Payton and 4 month old son, Grayden. I'm married to Jason and we live in Wisconsin. We are owned by a purebred Persian cat named Belle. I love photography I also enjoy gardening, travel, yoga, and Pilates.